Commercialize Your Technology

Professor Kate Rittenhouse-Olson brings an entrepreneurial attitude to her lab. In memory of her sister, she founded For-Robin, seeking an innovative treatment for breast cancer.

As a researcher, consider what you need to do in protecting new
discoveries, novel approaches or unique ideas. Or perhaps you see
potential for commercial applications. Tech Transfer helps with
those tasks as well as facilitating university/industry
opportunities ranging from materials transfer and confidentiality
agreements to research collaborations and licensing agreements.

Tech Transfer also handle reports to funding agencies as
required by the Bayh-Dole Act (37 CFR 401), to preserve the
potential for commercialization, and reports in accordance with the
SUNY Patents and Inventions Policy.

Dimien Creates a Recipe for Success: From Business Plan to Incubator and Beyond

It started in a UB chemistry lab with a professor and his
student assistants. After pivoting during the R&D phase, this
now engaging enterprise – Dimien - is working on an infrared
switchable coating that creates “smart windows.” When
applied to glass, the product improves energy efficiency by letting
sunlight into a building when the weather is cold and reflecting
heat when it’s warm. 3M thinks it might be a strategic fit
with its technology platforms.

UB graduate students Ann Brozek, Peter Marley and Brian Schultz
recognized commercial potential and entered the 2013 Henry A.
Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition with a business
plan. Their first-place finish earned them $25,000 in seed funding
along with in-kind awards such as legal and accounting services. In
the NYS Business Plan Competition, Dimien took second place in the
Energy and Sustainability track and won $5,000.

Brozek and Marley moved on to other opportunities and Schultz
remained with the start-up. He joined a UB sponsored team that
attended the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps
training, which stressed customer discovery and validation, having
the participants interview potential customers. Armed with this
additional customer insight and wanting a supportive facility,
Schultz moved the company into the UB Technology Incubator at Baird
Research Park.

Dimien stayed focused. The company received a highly competitive
$150,000 grant from the NSF Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) Phase 1 for use in market-driven commercialization and was
able to match funds for a supplemental SBIR Phase 1B grant.
It was a semifinalist in the 2014 43 North Business Plan
Competition and placed third out of eight teams in the New York
State Cleantech Challenge supported by the New York State Energy
Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

This online challenge was designed to connect start-ups and
investors from around the world and seemed to work for Dimien.
After “meeting” at the event, a Germany-based, 3M New
Ventures investment manager contacted Schultz because he liked the
product’s simplicity and its potential strategic fit. The
event organizer said online you can bridge the geographic gaps and
connect whereas the chances of crossing paths at an in-person event
would be minimal.

Dimien CEO and Managing Member Schultz would agree as he noted
in a Business First interview, “Like anything,
it’s been an interesting path to becoming an entrepreneur.
We’ve been able to see the larger goal and we’ve never
lost sight of it.”

Note: Dimien is currently a semi-finalist in the 2015 43
North competition.